'If you make happiness your goal, then you're not going to get to it… The goal should be an interesting life."

Dorothy Rowe

Sunday, 14 September 2014

Week 1: the journey begins

It has been a busy week, what with my first two days at Uni, two days grandparenting, 1 day fitting in all the boring appointments we had had to postpone because of the disruptions to our routine over the summer, and a weekend spent trying to sort out what I need for next week.

It has, however, been a very good week for sleeping. I am tempting fate by saying this, but the combination of having to get up at not quite silly o'clock most days of the week, plus long drives and a certain amount of uncertainty related stress, has (temporarily?) banished insomnia.

The down side is that I've been so tired that I haven't done much creative stuff, not even at Uni. I registered, got a parking permit, went to an introductory session, a lecture and a tutorial, sorted out and cleaned up my little corner of the art block, and panicked about what I was actually going to do. The tutorial, and sitting down and going through all my scrappy little notes of ideas, has helped with that. A bit.

Having told my tutor I was going to knit trees, I decided I'd better get started on a trial one.

Five hundred grammes of wool-cotton blend I happened to have lying about, a 4mm circular needle, and 100 stitches. In 5 hours I managed 10cm. At that stage I was planning on 2 metre trees, which at that rate would take me 100 hours. Since then Wensleydale has found an old 3 metre carpet roll in the loft, and 3 metres looks good. Er - 150 hours.

This suggests that, assuming I don't change my mind completely, I need to

1. make the trees smaller

2. machine knit them

3. use a heavier weight yarn

4. or any combination of the above.

Of course, I gave away my last knitting machine and my associated books over the summer. I asked if there was one at Uni - no - but the next day they were offered two, and as I'd asked... Serendipity or what?

Before I can really get cracking with Uni knitting, I need to finish the knitting I started before I started before, plus the embroidery for the Visual Marks exhibition. I was hoping to crack on with the VM stuff this afternoon, but the soldering iron was playing up. I eventually realised that the tip was coming unscrewed. I managed to resist the temptation to rescrew it with my fingers, but waiting for it to cool down took a large chunk out of the afternoon. (As did watching the final stage of the Tour of Britain, but we won't talk about that...) However the last major piece is more than half done - I shall be glad when it is out of the way.

I also have a pair of strange socks on the needles. Strange, because they were going to be grey and blue, until I realised I didn't have enogh grey, so they became grey, blue and variegated.

The shawl is on hold because I don't understand the instructions for the lace edging, and I need to find some I do understand.

No book of the week this week, I'm afraid. I had a couple of ideas, but no time. The closest I got was putting a cover on the educational year diary I had to buy - I can't be doing with the electronic versions, I need to be able to turn pages and add notes. The cover was definitely too naff for an art student, so I had to cover it with a bit of left-over Cas Holmes inspired fabric.

While I was stationery buying I went into Staples to buy some paper for a ring binder - and came out with this. Plus planner pages (I decided to by-pass my own system), two sorts of paper, dividers etc. Fortunately I already had some of the big binding rings so I could expand it. Unfortunately this was before my NUS card arrived, so I didn't get the student discount.

I like it because it is small, if not slim, (bit like its owner), I can move pages around, and with the dividers I can, I hope, use it for almost everything without getting confused. I could probably have found a diary insert as well, but I don't think there's room.